Passion and Ecstasy, BRB, Birmingham Hippodrome, review

Rather than Passion and Ecstasy the first half of this double bill at the
Birmingham Hippodrome was filled with charm and delight, while the second
half most definitely lived up to the title's promise. Rating: * * * *

There is something rather fearless about the title of this double bill. It certainly raises audience expectations to call a show Passion and Ecstasy, and to advertise it with a poster of a near-naked Tyrone Singleton in a fiercely sexy clinch with a fellow BRB dancer. Still, judging from the pleasurable rustling among the sizeable crowd before curtain up, the blatant ruse had done its job.

That said, there was neither passion nor ecstasy in the first half of the evening. Instead there was charm and delight in the form of Allegri Diversi, created by David Bintley in 1987 and set to some light yet stately curlicues of Rossini. In his role as company director Bintley has become known for his “story” ballets. Yet the subtle inventiveness of this plotless little piece shows a very different aspect to his talent.

The ballet looks adorable, a blend of the pastoral and the mythic reminiscent of Botticelli’s Primavera. Three couples hold hands in a circle, break into moves that look like simple classicism and then – with a slight diagonal slant to the body, or a sudden scissoring lift – twist into something witty, enlivening. At the heart of the ballet is a delicate, fiendishly difficult pas de deux, which Nao Sakuma and Joseph Caley handled near-perfectly.

The tonal switch from the airy Allegri to the hellfire symbolism of Carmina Burana should be hard to compute, but in fact it works extremely well. This hour-long ballet, set to the Orff cantata, was Bintley’s first piece for BRB in 1995. It most definitely lives up to the promise of its poster. The story has three seminarians struggling helplessly against the allure of the world they have renounced; the Philip Prowse design, with its blood-stained crosses and black-nippled ballerinas, disdains any notions of restraint.

Indeed the whole piece – a great favourite with audiences – is remarkable above all for its bravery. Who but Bintley would dare to look this overly familiar music in the face, and create something so full-on?

The piece is almost obsessively inventive and brilliantly executed. As the seminarian who knows that his passion for Fortuna – beautiful emblem of fate – will end in doom, Tyrone Singleton sketches a little masterclass in tragic acting. Celine Gittens, as sleek as a lynx in the role of Fortuna, effortlessly embodies a girl for whom any man would throw his cassock on to the fire.